Maude Lebowski is The Dude's introduction into the confusing and cerebral world of modern art. She's smart, sophisticated, and unflinching in her portrayal of the female form, which quickly becomes symbolic for "art" itself. When she first meets The Dude, she's flying over a canvas painted with the image of a naked woman. When she meets with The Dude the second time, we can clearly see photographed images of naked female bodies behind his head as he drinks his White Russian.

Maude Lebowski and the art world she inhabits are counterpoints to The Dude. The art world represents the cutting-edge intellectual and social progress of the 1960s, which was a time of expanding civil rights for women, people of color, and the LGBTQI community. While The Dude was getting stoned and listening to old Hendrix records, women like Maude Lebowski were making art about female oppression and sexual liberation.

Being a satire, the film is hard on Maude and her art world. The Coens make sure we see some of the pretentious and affected nature of artists who come across as pretty narcissistic and snooty to people who don't "get" their art. Maude even seems to be constructing herself and her life into a work of performance art.

Julianne Moore has said that the primary influences for Maude Lebowski were Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann. We all know Yoko as the Japanese conceptual artist who captivated John Lennon (and whom everyone blames for breaking up the Beatles), but who was Carolee Schneemann? Short answer: she was a feminist artist whose work explored the themes of sex and objectification. Like Maude, she painted from a swing. One of her most famous pieces was a little number called Meat Joy. Watch if you dare.